the view from above - and below

June 2009

06/28/2009

How many people do you know who are brilliant at what they do for work and useless at personal relationships? There are certainly a few in my sphere and a public example who springs to mind at the moment is Michael Jackson. Being the same age and a music fan I watched his career with interest and I believed him to be a genius at song writing and a breath-taking performer. But, what a mixed up and sad individual in his private life. Here was a man who started as a handsome little black boy with an amazing voice but who became a man who, literally, wasn’t happy in his own skin and set about trying to change himself - but from the outside in - which was never going to work. Instead of being proud of his many accomplishments, awards and fan base, he just couldn’t ‘tune out’ the critical voice - probably his father’s – which kept telling him that he had a big nose, wasn’t perfect and would never be the person he wanted to be.

In fact, as far as Emotional Intelligence is concerned, a whole book could be written about Michael, using him as an example of how not to be. It would appear that his life was spent trying to ‘fix’ himself but never from within his core being. By all accounts, his father was a demanding, unpleasant man who treated his children, Michael particularly, as commercial entities. Being a star from the age of five, it’s little wonder that Michael’s inner child was never allowed to develop naturally and not a surprise that, once he could afford it, he tried to create the magical, fun-filled childhood he never had, by developing and living in ‘Neverland’. His relationships with young boys were questionable to say the least but it is my belief that he was merely acting out what he thought a natural adolescence to be, which, of course, is wholly inappropriate in a grown man – but in the arena of relationships, Michael was only an adult physically, not mentally. He also appeared to be anthropomorphic in the extreme and kept his monkey, ‘Bubbles’, as part living toy, part companion (who, of course, could never answer back) and then had his three children, maybe, to mould into the sort of young people he could never have been or, to satisfy his longing for unconditional love. What he didn’t take into account was that, in order to accept love, one must love oneself or that, as the children of arguably one of the most famous people in the world, they would also be brought up in an unreal world, as he had been.

While Michael is an extreme example, there are many, many people who are desperately unhappy with how they look or act as the result of a damaged childhood. They may appear to be successful and happy on the surface of life but, eventually, the cracks will start to show unless they address the origins of their feelings of failure. To do this, they have to go inside themselves and find out who they really are, forgive themselves for what they perceive to be their shortcomings and start to befriend themselves. Poor Michael never realized this, resorting instead to the external fix - the surgery, the make believe, the superficial friendships and the prescription drugs. The world will be a poorer place without his talent but maybe his tragically early death can remind us all that money and fame mean nothing unless we truly are happy in our own skin.

06/23/2009

When
I told a friend of mine that I was writing a book on Emotional Intelligence, he
said, ‘Well, you’re intelligent and you surely are emotional, so it should be
an interesting subject, whatever it is!’
And that’s the problem.
Most people don’t know anything about the concept of Emotional
Intelligence, so I usually spend the next half hour explaining it.

Since
Daniel Goleman first brought the term into the public consciousness in 1995,
there was a brief flurry of general interest and then the term went largely
underground, apart from with the more enlightened corporate types, who realised
that ‘soft skills’ could actually contribute to the bottom line. Since then there has been further
interest in the health and well-being of employees in certain quarters and some
Directors are now seeing the benefits of having happier and more productive
staff. But, unless you work for a
large, possibly American-owned company, are you likely to have heard of
Emotional Intelligence? I think
that the answer is probably ‘no’ but would like to change all that, so please
read on.

I
did an IQ test the other day and it came out at 114 (I wasn’t feeling
well!). Joking aside though,
regardless of the excuses I make, and however much reading or studying I did,
if I did it again tomorrow and then again in 10 years, it’s not going to vary
by many points. However, in the
book, I contend that it is possible to vary one’s ‘score’ on an
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) scale through learning and application. So what is EQ and how does is differ
from its better-known cousin IQ?

My definition of Emotional Intelligence (EI) is almost
the same as Goleman’s and Salovey & Mayer’s, as the concept is the same,
it’s just the way that I describe it which is different. In the book, I say that EI is ‘the potential to be aware of and use
one’s own emotions in communication with oneself and others and to manage and
motivate oneself and others through understanding emotions.’ If that seems like a bit of a mouthful,
then sorry, but we have to get the component parts in. It’s a bit like a recipe for making a
Victoria sponge, there are only so many ways of saying that you have to
assemble eggs, flour, sugar and butter.
In a nutshell, an emotionally intelligent person is aware of her
emotions and how they affect her in life.
She is also aware of being impulsive and will usually think before
speaking or acting, as things done or said in the heat of the moment can often
be less than constructive. Most
importantly, she takes responsibility for her words and actions and will always
try to take a positive viewpoint on any situation. By taking responsibility for herself, the person can manage
her own responses and the responses of others, being able to manage upwards as
well as downwards in a more positive way.
One of the key components in this is the ability to empathise with others
in order to fully communicate with or motivate them.

So, we ‘re back to the title, ‘Emotional Intelligence – An Oxymoron?’ because what we’re
talking about is the ability to manage one’s emotional responses through
rational thought and the two don’t appear to sit very well together. In fact, when Doctors Salovey and Mayer
first discussed the term, as one was doing a study on intelligence and the
other on emotions, they actually thought it rather funny that anyone should
want to combine the two in the same sentence! It was Daniel Goleman who picked up on the idea and
popularised it and realised that it could, in fact, make sense. After all, the idea of ‘positive mental
attitude’ had been around for years, particularly in a sales context and many books
had espoused the virtues of empathy and compassion as the means of
understanding and communicating with others.

A person who reacts without thought will be out of
control and a person who reacts without emotion will be no better than an
automaton. The teaching of
Emotional Intelligence is the key to finding a balanced person who can think
and act while using a combination of the two. I would like to think that, after
many years of being too far near the edge of either side of the EI pendulum –
i.e. either too controlled or too wild – I have now achieved that balance. Hopefully reading the book will help
you to find yours.

06/11/2009

I tweeted yesterday that researchers at
King’s College have shown that women with higher Emotional Intelligence scores
enjoy more orgasms than their ‘sisters’.I did that as a sort of tongue in cheek tweet because, as we all know,
sex sells and I have a book out there!However, there is a serious point to be made here and it’s all about the
communication between the mind and the body.

In golf – and, if you’ve read my website,
you’ll see that I know a bit about it, even though I don’t play it – they say that
the most important six inches in the game is the distance between your
ears.That’s because you win or
lose in your head before you even move an inch.With any sport, apart from the positive mental attitude you
need to win, you also need excellent muscle memory, which means that you will
replicate that perfect swing, move or putt every time.It’s all about your mind visualising
and then your body putting that reality (remembering that your subconscious can't tell the difference between the imagined and the real) into practice.

Similarly, with sex, the body may initially
be willing but, if the mind isn’t engaged, forget it.I don’t want to turn into Dr Ruth, but sex really is all
about the mind and allowing yourself to ‘be'.If you can’t ever ‘let go’ of your
rational mind and lose yourself in the moment, how can you experience a sensation that, literally, makes no
sense?An orgasm is a mix of the
physical and spiritual and there’s no room for the critical voice, rational
thought or the mundane.The EI
word for today, then, is ‘appropriate’.The bedroom (or wherever) is no place for the shopping
list- apparently most women’s
favourite activity while engaging in the act for the sake of it – or wondering
whether the kids have games tomorrow.If you can’t shut out the critical voice that’s telling you that the skirting
board needs dusting or that he really needs to clip his nose hairs, it’s
unlikely that your earth is going to move.

So, ladies,
if you want to enjoy mind-blowing climaxes, allow yourself to just be. I don’t
have a specific visualisation in the book for sexual abandon (although, if
enough people ask, I’ll write one!) but there are plenty on getting in touch
with your intuition or core being, which is all you need. And, if at
first you don’t succeed, keep trying – the practising could be rather
stimulating….

06/07/2009

This isn’t a blog
as such, I just felt that I had to share this example of EI in practice.I was just writing a shopping list –
and it doesn’t get much more dull than that – when I ‘tuned in’ to the radio
playing in the background and heard the last bit of ‘Tonight’ that beautiful song from West Side
Story.The man sang the words ‘I saw you
and the world went away.’
And, from nowhere, I started crying big, fat tears, as some feelings I
have been keeping a lid on for some time overwhelmed me.Good job I wasn’t driving, although I
believe that my subconscious knew that I was in a safe place and had the
opportunity to ‘vent’.

Even after all
this time, study and writing, I was amazed that my first reaction was to stop
myself crying – incredible what a strong hold the conscious mind has on
us.But, I switched off the
critical voice that was telling me I was being stupid and had a jolly good
weep, even deliberately remembering some of the episodes that contributed to my
feelings of sadness.And,
afterwards, I felt so much better, almost as if some pressure I hadn’t even
been aware of had been relieved.

So, my message
is, keep ‘venting’, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else.Allow yourself to just be in the
moment and don’t let your conscious mind rule your life.As with most things in life, aim for a
balance. Dry eyes can mean an arid existence and no-one wants to live in a desert, do they?